 The data has made something crystal clear. Physical health is mental health and vice versa. Mental health is physical health. Look, one thing that Western medicine does really well is it dives deep into singular topics. Unfortunately, this divides things up and has led to the myth that mental and physical health aren't intricately connected. The bottom line is if you improve one, you tend to improve the other. To put it differently, you can't improve one without improving the other. Bringing this up because when you look at the data on the data now, it's really clear on this, the positive mental effects of exercise and nutrition on mental health, which, you know, we used to think, okay, yeah, yeah, we tell, you know, you work out, it improves your physical body, right? Change your diet improves your physical body. And somehow there's a belief, I don't know if it's explicit, but I think a lot of people just assume that they're not necessarily totally connected. But we forget that the brain is part of the body and that a healthy brain is connected to a healthy mind. Well, the data on exercise and nutrition shows it not only to be profoundly impactful in both directions, right? Both in the positive and potentially in the negative. It's so profoundly impactful. There's no medication, there's no talk therapy, there's nothing that even comes close to the impact that those things can have on your mental health. And then, you know, vice versa, improving your mental health tends to improve your eating habits and it tends to lead to better activity levels, exercise and just movement in general. Now, we knew this as trainers. We knew when we worked with people's diets that we were way more successful when we dealt with the behaviors rather than just the follow this, follow that type of deal, when people could figure out the why behind why they ate a particular way or why they distracted themselves with food and they tackle that genuinely, then we would see these incredible improvements and consistency. So, I mean, they're one and the same, right? They're one and the same. Do you think this is a result of the Western kind of approach and philosophy of like segmenting the body up into all these different systems and we're just going to isolate this and address this specifically. So, you know, in terms of instead of looking at it as a whole, like all systems affect each other, how's this going to now have, you know, the byproduct of that is going to affect this. Well, to become a mental health expert, you don't learn anything about diet or exercise, right? To become a physical health expert, you learn almost nothing about mental health. The funny thing is coaches and trainers that work with people for a long time will tell you that it's, I mean, you have to, you have to do it all, right? Now, I'm not saying I don't think it's possible. Maybe it is, but I think it's not feasible to have someone like master all these things, but it is something to keep in mind because then you can work with other practitioners to get your clients the best results or just for yourself, like realize like, if something's good for my mind, it's probably good for my body and if something's good for my body, it's probably good for my mind. They're not separate. They're not in vacuums. They're so closely connected and again, the data is extremely clear on this. I think most people are pretty aware of this, actually. I think what they're, what I think that we fail to realize is how powerful it is. I think, I don't think there's a person in the world that you would ask like, hey, do you think exercise, you know, improves your mental state? I don't think anyone would be like, no, I didn't know that. I think everybody would agree. I think the thing that isn't communicated enough is just just how profound it is, the fact that it rivals medications, that it's that successful when actually people apply that. And then it begs the question, if that's true and that's what all the research is pointing to is why then do we not, as soon as someone comes in, say, for therapy, would it not be like, okay, I'll see you next Tuesday. In between now and next Tuesday, I want you to go to the gym three times. Or I want you to like. They're starting to. They're starting to. It just, it takes so long for studies and stuff to, you know, kind of become implemented. Yeah, I too think that even with the way that we learn and how we've structured our education system, it's like, it's such an afterthought of the physicality that's necessary for kids to learn at a higher level. And that's so interconnected. And the more that some of these schools, like the very few schools that have picked up on this of including more physical activity and figuring out ways to incorporate throughout the day have had way better test scores and results. Yeah, look, if, if somebody said, let's say you were, you were, you took the average person and you say, Hey, look, we took two groups of people over the age of 65 and we wanted to improve their cognitive scores. One group, we had them do brain game exercises, crossword puzzles and math problems and, you know, problems involving spatial awareness where they have to like study an object, right? We just had to do squats. And yeah, the other group, we had them lift weights and change their diet. Which one do you think has better improvements in cognitive performance? Now the data will tell you it's the exercise group and the diet group that actually people's minds, though, that'll actually get better cognitive performance than the people doing the brain games. Yeah. I remember. Now this is in the, that's a step that I don't think everybody's aware. That's what I mean. Yeah. Now the reverse is also interesting. You know, remember those studies? You would read, you would read about where you had like groups of athletes, some practicing free throws, others mentally going through the free throws. Yeah, I shared that study. Yeah. And the mental, the guys who practiced the free throws in their head did almost as well. Almost exactly the same. So, and the people who did both did the best, did the best. Yes. Yes. So that was what was, but the people who practice like crazy versus the people that just did it mentally were almost exactly the same. Yes. It's crazy how that's wild to think that you put in all that work and then the person who just visualized it got this is even true for, for supplements, like supplements that in a healthy way, of course, because you can do things unhealthily, but supplements that improve strength, that improve metabolism, immune system will also show, tend to show improvements in cognitive health and vice versa. Things that are good for the brain, like choline, right? Choline, some scientists would say it's an essential nutrient. Choline is very important for brain function. In people who lack it when they supplement with, you know what they notice in the gym? Improved performance. They notice that they're stronger and they have more stamina. Crating, crating is another great example. Yeah. Crating is as much of a brain supplement as it is a muscle supplement. Well, it's weird to me too that people can't figure out as well. Like if you're in a state of pain or you're unhealthy or you're, you know, not feeling good, like your thought process and your behaviors and the way that you, your outlook on obstacles or anything that's like somewhat challenging, like you have a completely different perspective than you do when you have a healthy, thriving brain. Yeah. It's, it's, it's also propoded or say pushed, I would say in media, like how often do we watch movies where the athletes are portrayed as dumb and the, you know, the nerds or whatever are portrayed as like totally physically unhealthy and unfit. Yeah. Um, and that pushes the narrative that they're not totally connected when the truth is, of course, there's context matters, right? People who are gifted in one area aren't necessarily gifted in the other vice versa. But if you took athletes or gifted athletes and you had them not exercise, their cognitive performance go down. In other words, they're smarter because of the, the physical activity that they do. And the same thing with the, the Brainiacs, you know, you see all the scientists or the research nerds and they're trying to improve their performance in the lab or what their tests or what their innovation, um, if they went out and did some exercise and improve their physical health, they would have improvements, um, in those things. It'd be so interesting if they did like a, it'd be so interesting if they did like a, um, where schools were kids for the first 20 to 30 minutes of the day started that way. I like, if they, if we could show like it, it, it increased, you got to look at the studies on ADHD. They've done that where they'll take kids and they'll have them be active X amount of times for every two hours and they'll change. They'll make, they'll make, they'll involve the body with the mind, with their activities. And, uh, it's remarkable how much it improves performance among people with who'd be classified as ADHD. I, I think if you extended across the board, you would see way better. I mean, look, here's the, you ever watch a teacher that's really effective with kids, especially little kids, what do they do? They get them to move, they get them to do different thing out, just trying to get them to sit down and not do anything. I mean, that disrupts the energy systems of the body, which fuel the brain. They don't just fuel their, your, your muscles. They also fuel the brain hormones. I mean, if your hormones are off for goodness sakes, you know, look at the signs of, uh, one of the hormone imbalances that's very studied is low testosterone in men. Do you know what they show with cognitive performance in low testosterone? It's, it's down. They put men on testosterone, we have chronically low testosterone, their cognitive abilities improve dramatically. And of course their mental state, things like anxiety and depression, um, tend to get better. And of course exercise and diet positively affects hormones, um, as well. So, and then supplements, this is where it gets real fun. We often look at supplements and there's categories of supplements, right? Like this is better for athletic performance. And then these are better for, let's say, cognitive performance. If you do, if you take genuinely effective cognitive performance enhancing supplements, you will get a physical performance boost in the gym. Caffeine is a wonderful example. Caffeine is a classic. Now nobody would argue this, right? Every pre-workout has caffeine in it. But if I, but if caffeine were just discovered today, then let's say people just discovered it and they found like, oh my God, this improves cognitive performance, especially when you're tired, you got better memory recall and sharper, um, then it would be sold to the psych total. Neutropic, but we know caffeine does both. Caffeine, because it stimulates the central nervous system improves athletic performance, but also it's a, it's a, it's a supplement that is widely used by people who either want to improve their cognitive performance or just their physical performance, just to give you an example. Organify has supplements like this, right? Like pure, they would call as a neutropic, uh, because it helps with brain function and gut health, which is connected. Take it before your workout. See if you notice improvement, you probably will, or take it regularly. And you'll notice athletic performance improvements, right? Their pre-workout that they have, um, peak power, same thing, uh, before you take a test or you study, it is something you want to do before athletic performance, but try it before you study or read. See if you remember more and you're, and you're sharper while you're reading or trying to absorb information and you'll find that goes hand in hand. Absolutely. So it's, it's all the same in this separating them out has, um, made us so much less effective. Is it just our culture that does that? It's all cultures that are based in Western medicine are now doing that. Because if you look at ancient, um, or should I say old, you know, wellness practices, they all talk about how everything is all one, right? Yeah, one massive energy system. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, Chinese medicine, or Avedic medicine, they, they talk about things in this way. Um, but then, you know, what science is, which is very good. Science is, is an incredible tool. We can get super deep on in segment the body. Like, you know, you get a, you get a gastroenterology. Yeah. We have some of the best specialists. Exactly. Yeah. It's one of the best specialists in the world come from where I mean, that part, Doug, when you were in Japan, uh, cause you were in the school system there too, what did you notice a difference in the way they teach the kids along the lines of what Sal was talking about with movement and exercise and like. Definitely more movement, a lot more activity outside. Of course, I was working with young kids, but every year, Japan has something called, uh, sports day. And they prepare for this thing where they do all these events and they, you know, parade around and have a great time. Uh, so I think, yes, uh, activity in Japan is far more, you know, prevalent than it is here. They also have, I don't know if all the companies do there, but I remember reading about how there was a, uh, culturally before they work. They would, they would. Traditionally, do you have calisthenics before? Yeah. Yeah. So I, I've seen companies doing that. I mean, uh, like in front of a Mercedes dealership, for example, I saw a bunch of guys and ties and women in skirts and they're all doing their calisthenics. Right. Yeah. For sales. Yeah. That's awesome. I could shoot. I love that. That's great. I wonder it's so it's like. Although this is what, uh, like more and more studies are supporting your argument, it does feel to me like we're going further and further the opposite direction, though. Like, even though more is proving your point, it almost feels like we're getting further away from that than going like, Hey, maybe there's some of these things that we can adopt or bring back, at least it fills that way to me. I don't feel like I'm, I'm seeing more companies or more people get on, on board with that. Well, I think, uh, it wasn't that long ago that we started to get rid of PE and some schools. I know. That's crazy. Well, education might need to make a U-turn because, um, I don't know if you guys look at the numbers of the percentages of people pulling the kids out of school and putting them in homeschooling. Yeah. I shared those numbers the other day. Yeah. It's crazy. Mm-hmm. That'll kill the, the education. I mean, don't you think that the educate, I mean, we're getting ready to go to the ARC event, right? With, um, uh, Jordan Pearson and his, I believe he, I don't know if they've launched his school yet or it's about to, I mean, that's going to be in the November or something, I think that's going to be a major disruptor. So, I mean, we've talked along the podcast a long time ago about that being one of the biggest, uh, sectors that I think is going to get disrupted in this next decade. Don't you do still believe that are getting disrupted? You did, if you can curate like some of the best professors from every school, Ivy League schools and all these things, and then you just put them in one platform for like a lower cost and you get like a way better, uh, presentation and, and delivery. It's like, I've always wondered like what stops somebody right now from like curating already what's out there on TED Talks. I feel like you could put a curriculum together that is like really good. I think that's what this is going to be like. If, if, if education, and I, I understand the value of, um, state sponsored education. So I understand that this value there, but it's explain it to me. Well, well, okay. No, I just, no, I seriously, I do understand it. So when it first happened, it really did bring it really dramatically improved literacy for that's one measurement. Okay. Uh, because, uh, now there was something that was covered. You can send your kids to and, um, sure. Cause you're comparing to the opposite, which was nothing. Right. So of course, right. But I think that we are decades now deep into it's, it's not being good at all. And in fact, because it's state sponsored, it hasn't moved. It hasn't changed. I bet you if it was entirely market based, I don't think it would be so, it would look so different today. Of course. Then it does now it's like it doesn't make any sense that past a certain age, you continue to learn all these other subjects. Name one job where you need to know, besides teaching other kids, you know, in sixth grade, you know, name one job where it's not where you know one skill really deep and then the other stuff, you know, have to worry about. There's nothing like that. Right. So it doesn't make any sense that you're going to go and take all this, all these other subjects past a certain age, I guess. It also doesn't make sense that your kids go to school for seven hours a day or six hours a day. You ever talk to homeschool? Your podcast. And, and or that we teach them all the same. We already know how different other people, everybody learns. Right. So, I mean, what one group that fits that perfect mold gets educated? Well, the rest. I always find I find it weird that you go to university now, you go to a university and they're like, here's the book you have to buy for this class. $300. What? Yeah. What do you mean? I got to first of all, it's a paper book. Is are they still doing that? Yeah. Really? You still got to go how to do that stuff. I think it's part of his tuition. But yeah. The it's a racket. That's why it's a total racket. I mean, I thought they got rid of that. I thought they were disrupting that. All right. They're starting to disrupt it. But it's like hilarious. How slow it is today's program giveaway is maps anabolic advanced here. So you can win it. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. These are also the final hours of our October sale. Maps bands half off and the hardgainer bundle of programs half off. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Here comes the show. You know, we haven't haven't caught up with you on that off air or on air. Wow. Is he liking school? Yeah, he's enjoying it. Yeah. The independence for sure. Okay. Yeah, because he's got it. You can, you know, do his own stuff now. I mean, is this like, I mean, and how are you doing that as a dad? Are you like, is this the the longest stretches of time where maybe you won't? How many check-ins per week? Yeah, as I say, how often are you are you bugging him? Oh, I call him most days and I'll call I'll talk to him for like a minute or two, not even maybe like three minutes or a text. Like, hey, what's going on? How's today? That's all just to, you know, see what's going on. OK. But and then the the other day I facetimed him with with the family. I mean, what's the most different for you as a dad with that has a kid in college? No, just not seeing your kid. It's weird, you know, because you don't see him. So they're not around. And then when you do talk to him or when I do see him, you just you miss him, you know, you just miss your kid. Yeah, because otherwise I saw him, you know, every day. Yeah, almost most days, right, because he was with the other half of the time. That's that's the tough part is your kid moves out. So it's like you said goodbye. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you I mean, obviously, you're really close and tied to the kids. And so do you are you battling yet that struggle of as a dad, I want to see him more. And so any of his free time, you're wanting him to come that way. But then also like knowing that I got to let him kind of do his own thing. No, I think his mom struggles a lot more with that than I do. Yeah, I as I don't know if it's a dad mom thing, but I want him to be independent. I want him to experience things. I want him to handle his like I'll give you guys a silly example when we dropped him off his mom. She was so mad because he took one pair of shoes. Now you guys know where he's at. And I don't want to go into details just in case, you know, whatever. But where he's at, the weather can change quite a bit so he can get it can snow it can whatever. And she's like he only took one pair of shoes. If it snows, you get real cold. And I kept telling him, but he didn't want to bring other shoes. I'm like, he'll learn. Yeah, he's going to get cold. Yeah, and he'll have to buy some in the DAP. She's like, I'm going to mail him the shoes. I'm just going to send him to like, don't like what? No, like he needs to totally because that's how you build confidence. You just you figure out a problem. Oh, crap, this sucks. My feet is that's such an Italian mom thing. Oh, just to take care of her boy like that. Right. Like I told you guys how I grew up. It was just I didn't make my bed until I moved out. I mean, make my bed. OK, it's just it's so funny because it's like this for it's good and bad. Right. Like it also one of the things I think that's great about your your culture, your family, like you guys, especially being I have a very opposite, right? Is the the tightness, the bond, the like you you lean on your family, you know, they got your back, you got their back, like there's just this incredible. Well, you know what it is? Here's why it's this. I don't think it's like this. Maybe it is still like this. But my parents are they're also poor Sicilians. So it's even more like, you know, like like more traditional, I guess. And the reason why it was like that was the when you were a man when you got married, your wife took over all that stuff. So your mom did it for you and your job was to go work and learn how to work. Right. Right. And then when you met a wife, it's not you needed to know any of this stuff because she would do all that stuff. So so like my dad, I remember my dad would wake up in the morning and my mom would have his clothes out. I don't even think he knew where his clothes were for a long time. So not OK. I swear to God, he would wake up. I remember I never forget. I had I had one of my friends over and then my dad was yelling from upstairs for my mom is like, what's the matter? I'm like, oh, he's nowhere's underwear. OK, but here she would get his clothes out for me. Here's here's a question I have for you and you you're you are notorious for saying things like this, right? Like, you know, we should really look at things that have been passed down for generations and hundreds of years, the wisdom, culturally, the wisdom that's in there. Of course. That is obviously something that's been passed down for hundreds of years, not like your family was the first family to do that stuff. So do you ever investigate that like, OK, OK, I'm in this new, you know, I'm in a different type of relationship and I live in these times. Therefore, this is how we do things. But it's like, hey, wait a second, my my family did do those things for a reason. Do you see the obviously you see the drawbacks because you saw it like you said, oh, man, I couldn't even do this and I couldn't do that. But do you also recognize probably some of the role? Let me ask you this, you know, running a business. Is this is it valuable? Were you and your partners know exactly what your roles are? You don't question the other person. You just rely on them and you just handle your business. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So families were run like that for a long time. It wasn't like disrespecting, by the way, my mom. No, it's just a pride that my dad took care of his stuff. My mom never had to worry about it. My mom took care of the other stuff. My dad never had to worry about and they depended on each other and they valued and respected each other. They never treated each other. It was like my dad treated my mom like, you know, like a like a like a bath mat or whatever. Or my mom was like, they respected each other, did their thing and it was a division of labor and it was very effective. They raised four kids with no education, poor immigrants, and they did a very good job and it was very efficient, effective. And society has changed so much that the roles are not like that anymore. And I think it caused a lot of problems. Not saying it's necessarily worse, but you got to then figure it out, whereas it's already outlined. It used to be outlined. It's just more confusing. Yeah. Now it's like it blurs those lines a lot more. Yeah. And you're doing more and what's happening. Now redefine it. So yeah, I totally get that. The simplicity. I think, yeah, I think that's kind of what every culture ends up, you know, adding a lot of complexity to things. And I mean, it's it's hard to reevaluate that when you think like we're progressing so far and more modern like ideas. But it's like a lot of the traditional stuff. There was a lot of things that got right. Well, we the big mistake we made being progressive like this was saying was blurring all those lines and it being OK, but then not educating or helping our generation coming up on how do you know, how do you manage it? Well, it's like, hey, we push this agenda so much that, you know, women can do this, men can do that, it doesn't matter and mixing it all up. But then you don't think like, OK, what are some of the challenges that come with that? And then how do you communicate with your partner to work that out? You just assume that everyone's just going to do everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the part where I think we messed up because I do think that there's I mean, I know in my household like Katrina and I think you have to figure it out anyway. Right. Because she had figured out about what she has. She has masculine energy. I have feminine energy that so there's different roles that we would consider. I would consider is flip flop for traditional values and we it works magically. But we also had to figure that out like there wasn't a blueprint. It's a myth that you and your partner are not going to have to. You're going to have to figure this out. Yeah, whether it was already defined or not, you're going to have to divide labor because you can't both be responsible for everything because that is problems. Yeah, but I but that part isn't communicated. No, it's not. It's not communicating. It's just and we took for granted that it was already that's right. We took for granted the positive of that, right? We all we've talked about for the last 20 years is the negative stuff of what that tradition. Well, even worse, even worse, we made one side look like it was more valuable than the other. Right. In particular. And this is how this is just I think this is a travesty is that for a while. I remember this in school, you know, like saying that you were a stay at home. Oh, yeah. Was like, oh, oh, really, you don't have a job. Like you don't do anything. Like so we've we've taken that and not saying one's better than the other, but we've made that look like for a long time like it's not an important role. What? Yeah. Or like that's crazy. The breadwinner is the most important. That's the person that matters the most. No, no, no, hold on a second. The most important job, in my opinion, is who's raising the kids the most? And yeah. And yes, definitely if you're the breadwinner, you need to have resources and stuff like that, whether that's the matter of the woman. But you got you can really going to tell me that that that going and working for someone else is more valuable than raising your own children. I just had this. I just had this discussion with my aunt, the one that I told you that had, you know, the five kids that all she homeschooled all of them and like she said she would share with me. So that she that was going on in the 80s when she was doing 80s in the 90s. And I remember her, you're just this was a current conversation. She telling me that how uncomfortable it would be for her when they go do things with other couples and to say she's a homemaker. Yes. And then people, what do you do? You know, like, oh, I, you know, I raised my kids. Oh, you don't work. You don't do like that. And she said there would be, it would be always, she'd always hate when we go somewhere like that where she said that that would be the conversation because at that time that was when like that the big movement started to be like that. And she said a lot of people would look down upon that, that, oh, she just stayed home and did the kids. And I was like, man, that's so unfortunate. We had a friend over, a good friend of ours, love this person, we had a friend over and they work, they also have kids and their circumstances requires like those steps of things. And they asked Jessica, I remember when I heard this I was like, oh God, because I could tell, I was like, this is going to annoy, this annoyed me. I know it's going to annoy Jessica. They're like, oh, so what do you do all day? Like you, like, as if Jessica's got all this free time and the kids are just over there. You can't justify it. And you know, Jessica, I looked at each other and I told her, I said, you know, honey, the reason why people say that is because I think first off, some kids, some people raise their kids that way where they come home from work, they put their kids in front of the TV and they're not actively raising them. I'm like, they just don't have any idea how involved you are. Cause raising kids, yeah, you could definitely plug in an iPad and leave your kid and then go surf the internet and do nothing. I mean, that's half the problems I think we're dealing with right now. Sort of in the little jumper by themselves forever. Yeah, no, like Jessica's like, all day she's involved. All day she's involved raising the kids, making, you know, looking at what they're eating, what they're watching, teaching them, you know, looking at their physical development. Like it's an all day thing. It's not like she's, you know, she's home and the kids are over there. Well, think about it. You're technically a full-time teacher with no breaks, no days off and no clocking out. And you work as much as you want. And in addition to that, if you also manage the house, keeping it clean, cooking, I mean, it's like, and then you're also running a full-time janitorial and house cleaning service on top of a full-time teaching. I mean, talk about crazy. It's crazy that we devalued that as much as we did and it's unfortunate because, and then also didn't talk about it. If we were going to blur all those lines, what does that look like? You know, if we're gonna throw out all these traditional values, okay, what is it, what's gonna replace that? I mean, it reminds me of that conversation or that when we listened to Jordan Pearson talking about what he said about, you know, church on Sundays with kids. It's like, okay, that's fine. You don't have to take your kid's church. You don't have to be religious. That's fine. But what are you gonna do in replace of that? What are you gonna teach your kids as far as morals and values? And it's like, fine, okay, say what you wanna say about a religion or religions or whatever, but then are you gonna pick up the rock? Are you gonna pick it up from there and then make sure you spend the time? I just, I hate the whole like, you know, the whole narrative where like, my job is more important than your job or my job is more prestigious or your job is more prestigious. You know, anybody who's ever been on a successful- It's a lead-ism. Yeah, dude, anybody who's been on a successful sports team or company or a band or whatever, you start getting that attitude, you're done. If you play on a sports team and you think you're the most badass player of all and it's just about you, you're done. Your team's a lose. That's why you're gonna not get the rock anymore. That's it. So you could think you're such a badass. I'm the lead singer, you know, like bands. Every, you know, behind the scenes or whatever those, remember those documentaries? Behind the music. Yeah, behind the music. VH1. How do they always end, right? The lead singer thinks he's the most awesome guy in the world and then ends up breaking up the band because Ego gets in the way. Ends up looking like with that, the granny from Goonies. Do you see Axl Rose on the mix now? Yeah. Oh, I saw that comparison. I saw that comparison. He's a little choking and he looks just like the lady. One of the things I think that has saved Katrina and I is that we both had that athletic background and that's exactly how I've always communicated. It's your team, dude. It's like the goal in life is to win, right? We're trying to win at life and be really good at it. Part of winning at life is being successful, raising good children, being good humans, all these things, right? So if we look at that's the goal to win and you and I are a team, like does it really fucking matter if you bring the ball up the court or I do or sometimes you shoot it or I shoot it? Like if we're scoring and we're winning, that's what matters. And you ran a little faster that time than I did. Like none of that matters. It's like at the end of the day, like, and because she's got an athletic background, she gets that, you know what I'm saying? Especially since she was like a key role player for a team as I was. Not only that, but to go even further, I learned this too late in life. I wish I learned this earlier, but people, this whole like 50-50 argument about relationships is bullshit because when you're together, you plan on being together for 30, 40 years, okay? Are you really going to be able to contribute 50% that entire time? You're not going to go through hardships, you're not going to get ill, you're not going to, it's- Is one person going to have to take on a lot in a certain moment? Not even just a moment, sometimes it could be years. I mean like years, they're like whatever that looks like, but then it totally reverses and then you just got to flow with it. Because we all see eye to eye on that is the reason why this works. It's the number one thing when I talk to other CEOs and founders and companies and they go, wait, there's four owners that split? Like how do you split the task up? And what do you do when, what are you doing when you're, if you're working way more than the other guy or this like, you guys can't all equally work the same amount, but yet you have an equal, and it's like- We're clocked out right now, I guess. Like nobody, I said nobody's looked at it like that. Nobody has ever, each guy values each other so much that nobody is counting the minutes of contribution that this person is doing to it. It's the ultimate goal is to win and so long as we're winning, everybody is happy and they're just like, oh, that's just so crazy. There's also, I also think you have to combine that with, you know, if there's ever a moment where I can do something for the team here, and whether that means I'm doing something like I'm flying somewhere or I'm doing something, I actually, I find pride in it. Like, oh, here's my opportunity to contribute in a way to the team where I can provide something. I feel good about it. So I think you have to combine it with that as well. Not the whole, like, otherwise you get into the like you said where, well, he did that, I did this, and huh. Oh my God. No, you just look for your opportunities and yeah, you contribute where you can. You remember when we first, we originally did Mind Pump, we had a fifth partner, and I'll never, this was a strong sign it would never work with the other person. After we recorded a couple episodes, we're like, okay, so you talked the most the last episode, Sal, so now you're gonna talk a little more and then I'm gonna do- Just need to open this. I'm gonna do it and all of us are like, what? This is gonna suck if we do that. This podcast is gonna suck if we start counting minutes, who's doing the more crickets, you know, in the background. People, that's kind of the natural default for a lot of people, though. I get asked that all the time, you know. Does it bother you, like, you know, like everybody thinks it's Sal's company and this- Oh my God. I hate that. That makes me sad. Everybody, yeah, we talk about it, everybody. Yeah. Stupid. Stupid. Hey, I'll bring up something interesting that's a, I would love to hear you guys' thoughts, I mean, I know you guys are gonna come to the same conclusion, but I read this study and I know people get it, take it the wrong way, right? So here's the study, ready for this? Study says making your bed makes you 206% more likely to become a millionaire. All right, so what do you think's happening with that? I mean, that's an easy. All you're correlating is that you've built disciplines and habits and routines, which are extremely important to being financially successful, fit, and many other things. Reverse causation, it's sort of reverse causation, all right? So it's like people are more likely to be successful or also more likely to make their bed. But how many people you think reading that are like, I'm gonna start making my bed. I know. That's gonna make you a millionaire. That's the morning hack. Yeah. There's something magical about me. I mean, I would, it's back to our school conversation. I think that's one of the biggest, most valuable things about school is the fact that you discipline, especially when you go past like high school, right? When you actually have the option to go, right? When you go to college. How to learn them. Yeah, like the most important part is not what you learned in it. It's literally that you disciplined yourself to get up every single morning, show up to the classes, do the work to pass the test, and you didn't just do that for a week or two, you did that for four years or longer. Those characteristics transfer into so many other aspects of being successful in life. That is the hands down most valuable thing that it offers. Unless you're into some very specialty degree where you had, let's say you're being a doctor and you got to learn a lot of things like that. But for the most part, and even then I would still argue that the behaviors that you, and the disciplines that you gained from doing that are probably the most. You know, that's the argument for, because I know the military, I know medical school did this for a while where they were adding limits, I think, or restrictions to how much you could have. You know, when kids graduate medical school, they have to do residency. And in the old days, you would just, you would get destroyed, they would hammer you with hours, right? And they started putting limits on it. And I remember training a bunch of old school doctors and I remember them being so annoyed with that. Like, no, what are they doing? They're not gonna prepare these guys. These people are gonna come out, they're gonna go in the ER, they're gonna crack. They need to like push them, and they remember them telling that to me. The military, the military's been doing that for a little while too, where they lower the standards or make it safer, easier. And then you hear people who go out and serve in war and they're like, what are you doing? You go out to war, they're not gonna care. You gotta go through the fire, man. You have to be a machine. Yeah, I know. It's being of limiting. So, you know, I've told you guys, max this thing with time. Two minutes, you have two minutes, like he has no cost. Yeah, two minutes is just, that means it's time to stop. So it's like, that's the universal, you got two more minutes and you're done with that. Two more minutes till it's dinner. Two more minutes, we gotta go to school. Everything's two minutes, right? And so, we're in the bath last night and whatever he loves when I take a bath with him, because that means dad's full-time playing in the bath, right? Like that's all we do is act out characters and sounds and we're doing something like that. And honestly, sometimes I'm like, God, I just wanna soak in the bath for a minute. I don't wanna have to do this, but that's like, you know, whatever, right? So that's my thing with him. So we're playing and the kind of the routine is that him and I will do that for a while. That gives Katrina time to get everything ready for bed and do her thing. And then she'll come in when it's almost time to pull him out. She'll be like, all right, Max, two minutes, you have left, right? And he makes me do like the voices of the characters and I cannot just sit in there. Like I have to always be holding at least one or two. And if I set my hands down, he grabs my hands and is like, no, no, you gotta be this. And so we're doing the characters and stuff. And Katrina came in, Max, two more minutes, two more minutes, okay, okay, mommy. And then it gave me a break of character play for a minute. So I was like, hey, how was school today? Stop talking. He goes, stop talking. He goes, you're wasting minutes. All right, all right. Oh my God, Katrina fell over. She started laughing. So I was like, oh my God. It's the first time you've ever told me that. Stop talking. Stop talking. I'm just asking you how cool is your wasting minutes. Back to character. Don't you love that? Oh yeah. It's like, you have to laugh, dude. It's just the stuff that they pick up, man. And then they repeat or say it and it's just like, dude, he's definitely at that fun age. Yeah, I do stories with the Raylias. She'll say things just, and I'm like, where did you learn? Yeah, like where did you pick that up? Yeah, like he said bodacious. Bodacious, you know? And he's like, it was so like a ninja turtle. And I couldn't, at first I thought I'd understand. I'm like, what are you saying? What are you saying? And I'm like, are you saying bodacious? He's like, yes. I'm like, what? And then it was from Kung Fu Panda. In the very beginning, like the opening, he talked about his bodacious skills or something and that's where he got. He also understood electrocute. I was drawing characters for him. He loves it when I tell stories about monsters, which is cool, because I love telling monster stories. So I drew them out for him. I made like an ice monster or a rock monster. It's always a cool team, by the way. I'm really good at these, by the way. You should come. Okay, I'll have to look at your skills. Yeah, so that combining their powers and this and that. I drew an electricity monster. And he goes, oh, Popeye's gonna electrocute. He's gonna electrocute the other guy. Like how do you know that? How'd you know that? That's what that means. When he understands concepts, I told you guys to bring home the bacon one the other day. How in the world would you even know that? We're playing his, of course, we're always playing Mario and Bowser, what's that? And he's like, ah, Vampire Bowser. I'm like, Vampire Bowser, there's no Vampire Bowser. Daddy, I'm using my imagination. Okay, that's fair. Yes, you are. I'm like, what? Just the fact that you understand that concept, you know what I'm saying? I think that's so hilarious. Dude, I told you guys about the coloring books I got for every other show. Oh, the Walmart people? Yeah, yeah. So we also found some like band-aids just because I was like, these band-aids are lame. They gotta have something cool. They have like literally like bacon strips. Like so you put it on, it looks like bacon strips. I'm like, what else do they have on the internet? We're like going through all this stuff. Like if I was a kid and I wanted to like find something really stupid and silly, you know, dude, there's so many great options. He was like taking me through all this stuff and we're like buying stupid stuff. You know what side hustle I wanna do, and this is so bad that we created this monster, is the little round basalt, basalts? Do you guys ever- Bath bombs. Bath bombs? Yes. Okay, and they have like a toy inside of them. Oh, what? Yes. This is like, and they're not that- One of those like foam ones that kind of expands. Yeah, you throw it in there and it just dissolves, right? It's a bath bomb or whatever. But inside of it is a toy, and that's been like the traditional thing that everybody buys him. And so he loves those things, and I don't even know what the price is on them, but they're not, they're definitely- The margin's gotta be huge. Yeah, the margin's gotta be huge, and- It's soap. Okay, I so wanna do this. So maybe somebody would figure out how to make this. They look like they're pretty basic to put together, and what a brilliant way to recycle. I mean, I must have thousands of these little itty-bitty toys that he wouldn't even know is gone, turn right around and make my own, and then turn around and flip and sell those things. I bet you there's an at-home way to make them. They are. Where you can just make it yourself. There is a way to do it. Look it up, Doug. I know- You have to make your own bath bomb. And I know they're not, it can't be expensive. It's basically salt and- Hopefully we get some crazy- PCP or something. Yeah. Hopefully we just get flagged and those turn into zombies. Doug's looking up all kinds of crazy shit, bath bomb. No, I've seen people like on Etsy and stuff that are doing this- Have you seen the ones for adults that you put them in the shower and then they let out like eucalyptus or whatever? Yeah, vapor. Yeah, that's pretty good. I've done the Vicks one before when I was sick. Oh, you did? You remind me of like, I remember bath toys that were like really simplistic, and I don't know if you remember, they were like in pills, and you like put it in there, and then they expanded to like foam dinosaurs? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, those are awesome. I liked bath toys, and these are the ones I still get for my kids that like motorboats and submarines and shit like that actually go through the water. And like sharks. Did you know you can make, so you can make a paper boat and put a little piece of soap in the back and that'll propel it? Do you guys know that? No. If you put it in water because it breaks the surface tension, soap does that. Yeah. And it'll scoot itself around. Who's it like doing it? Yeah. What? What? Did you look up and make it yourself? Yeah, there's a YouTube video. See? There's always a YouTube video. I think they sell for a couple bucks per ball, and I bet you can make them for nothing. How to make kids' toy surprise for the bathroom. Is that what it said? Yeah. Oh, this'll be fun. I'm gonna make this. Yeah, tell me like this. Okay, and I have so many of these tiny little toys laying around that I could totally redo it. I'm like, why are, I told Katrina, why are we getting shit? We don't buy them. People buy them from like all his family buys them, so I'm like, okay good, because I don't want us wasting money on this. This is crazy, because we could literally recycle it. He would not be the wiser. Because a lot of times, he gets the same ones over anyways. See, look at $7.99. For what? For one. Oh, it's a Hot Wheels one, that's why. Yeah, but I mean, even the other one. A nine pack for $24, they're not cheap. You know what's funny? I'm like, oh man, I'm like hearing you guys. I'm like, I missed that, you know, that window. Like I'm over, I'm gone, right? Kids are too old. But the Hot Wheels, like we actually reinvigorated, like Everett does like this track. So we have this whole, like, all the way from up on top of this like old orange one. Yeah, so you know how the big drop off from my back deck, like it goes down, like we have one going from the deck and then all the way down and then like jumping it and stuff. And I'm like, dude, I'm like, and he's 10, he's almost 11, but he's like still into that kind of stuff. I'm like, ooh, you know, it's fun. Have you guys seen, I would never do this because I don't know how to do it, but you might be able to. Have you ever seen people make little roller coaster tracks on their backyards? Oh, yeah. They're pretty cool. I've seen some pretty cool ones where like, it's all by momentum. So you get at the top. For good welder, yeah. I've seen people like make like some serious tracks. Yeah. I can't imagine that being cheap though. No, I don't know. Yeah, without having that skill. Like you need that skill to be able to weld like that, to be able to do that. Take some time off, you guys. I'm making this roller coaster track on my back yard. All right, kids. Oh, shit. What happened? What happened to your kid? He would let me do something like that. Hey, I wanted to comment on something because this is such a, in our space, well, I think in every space, a tell tale clue or, you know, sign that you're crushing is when other companies begin to copy you and then attack you, right? So if you come out with a product and- Both at once. You come out with a product and you start, when you start to make waves is when, and you know is when other companies come out with copycat products. Are you guys seeing all the copycat element products? All the element tea, copy of it? Electrolyte powders, now all of a sudden? I've seen some really stupid ads. Oh, this is too much salt. And this is- That's the whole point. I know, I know. That's why- Oh, you mean the Dr. Integrity one? Oh, notification. Is that who did that one? It was Dr. Integrity, yeah. God, he's so irrelevant. He's a winner. He's a winner, yeah. It's too much sodium for what? He needs to stick with gummy bears and just go away. You know, I actually, you know, he's been quiet. I don't know, maybe that's cause we all got blocked from all his stuff. And so I don't see a lot of it. But when we first started, he was popular in the space. Like a lot. Like I heard a lot of his name thrown around. We went on a, other than this, you're bringing him up right now. Like I can't remember the last time I'd even seen him. Yeah, same. Well, too, what was the one guy that just recently got, he was the primal- Oh, yeah, yeah. Leverkin. Leverkin guy. Like you haven't heard from him since right now. Somebody did a post on him. He's like, I'm a, I've been natural now for three months. Looks the same. Well, are you, are you really? I wonder if we're gonna see him at the Olympia. I still poop once a day and I don't wipe. You think we'll see the Leverkin? I don't know if he's an Olympia type of guy or not. I don't know who's gonna, I actually, we've announced that and I actually haven't heard a lot of people tell me that they're gonna be there. I wonder if, because it's in Florida that will, I mean, we still have a huge following in Florida. So I would think we would, but how, maybe, remember that, remember when we had, who was it? Did we have someone on the show? Or you brought up, I think it was Jeremy Buendia or somebody, right? Like a bodybuilder, like person. Oh, it was at a live event. Yeah, and everyone was like silent. No one knew who he was. You know, yeah, I know. And so I was like, you know, maybe like our, we as a, like a podcast is just completely moved away from that space. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, we have some competitors. I know we have some of them in our, inside of our forum. And we just talked about great today. Well, the Olympia is not just bodybuilding me more though. It's been now fitness for a long time. You're right, you're right. But it's still known for that. It is. You know what I'm saying? That's still the big. You know what I can't wait to do? This is what I, so I've been to a couple of these conventions. No, I'm not going to do that. Yeah, you do want to do that. No, I don't. Maybe. I really enjoy doing this at these conventions. What's that? You didn't know all the supplements. Taking all the supplements. I don't know exactly. Cause you know why? It's like following for him. They're handing out so many packets of things. And what I do, Can we put a blindfold on you and just like see what you think it is? It doesn't matter. So I'm going to take everything at the same time. So we don't know what's down the hatch. We don't know what's going to happen. Speaking of taking things, Justin, you were mentioning element with your headaches. I was, yeah. And so what happened? Well, I remember, I don't know if it was a study I was reading, but like it was cause originally like the caffeine and then the aspirin, combo, whatever, like that was kind of like to go to cause I get really bad severe headaches, but like the dehydration component there and like the intramuscular water, like all this stuff, like I guess the more your deficient in salt, like too that adds into like headaches. And I used to get them all the time. I don't get them much anymore, but like sometimes they get really like powerful headaches. And so I decided this time to try, you know, maybe like drinking some element tea and it totally helps. Yeah. Look up the studies on it. Look up migraines and sodium and there's a very strong correlation and several studies on that. Jessica gets migraines so bad that they're frightening. When she was a kid, she used to get them. You guys tried like green light and all kinds of stuff. Everything. When she was a kid, in fact, she was so young when she first started getting them, that they got, you know, they did MRIs and stuff sitting on the side. I used to get them pretty bad too. And element, element teas made a big difference. She'll still get them, but I'm trying to think now, it's pretty rare now. When I was first with her, it would happen once a month where she would get a headache so bad. She actually wants to pull her hair out. Like it's really, really bad. Now she'll get a headache, but not quite to that point. Yeah, I think it was when my blood pressure was like really high and I had issues. That was a contributor. When Adam gave you that two month from all the supplements. Doug, what, do you know the number live? Do you know what booth number we're at when we're at the Olympia? 1301. 1301. Yeah, that's Friday the 3rd of November from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then from 12 to 4 on Saturday the 4th. So two days were there, 10 to 2. Two days is going to be a good time. Four hours. Oh, hey, Adam, I want to bring this up to you. Did you hear what Netflix is going to be doing? What? I'm surprised because you're like so big on this kind of stuff. I don't know. I don't know. Well, tell me. So in 2025, Netflix will be opening its first physical location known as Netflix houses. No, I did not know that. Yeah, so with a mix of retail, food and live theatrics, the houses will be something of a modernized experience first theater. Live theatrics? Like like actors? So like to give an example, visitors will be able to try a squid game obstacle course, for instance. Interesting. Yeah, so so it's probably like you'll be able to watch maybe like new releases there that are not on Netflix. You'll be able to imagine, imagine going to this makes a lot of sense. Like imagine going to a place like what's the one that you guys all love that you used to use? Stranger things? Yes. Like a stranger things themed house. Oh, yeah. And go watch like the premiere. I see. Or what a great way to get their hardcore fans. You already have it built in, right? Yeah, these hard shows. Live event, the attached to it. This to me, you serve popcorn, like almost like its own movie theater type of experience with more stuff. Stranger things when we crash. 100%. And I think that this will be that because theaters are already are trying to figure out what the hell to do because people are going to the movies less and less. Do you have to do some kind of new entertainment involved? It has to be an experience, not just watching something because everybody watches things on TV. Yeah, imagine you go watch that. Like you could go watch the episodes at like one of these houses. Like maybe maybe they're released like a couple of days early or maybe the day that they're released. Like you're a hardcore fan. You want to go watch it with other hardcore fans. Yeah. And there's like things there besides just watching. Sure. Like some of the actors dressed up in costume and all that. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. Well, see what happens. That's 2025. That's going to be a big a big risk. But I think Netflix, I believe it. It's going to crush. That's what I think. Yeah, no, that's that's really interesting. You know what? I was I was let down on the old dad. Oh, I don't watch it was bad. It wasn't bad. It was just me. Really? I haven't seen it yet. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was going to be a lot better. Was it too predictable? It was too. The trailer made me think it was a little predictable. Well, I mean, it's obviously I mean, it's all very predictable. There's nothing at all like that you couldn't figure out. It's way different than his stand up. Like so. So I thought it was going to be funny because they definitely kind of came after woke culture. Yeah. And but they tried too hard to come after woke culture that it was like they made every example they could have like extreme. OK, which it was a comedy. So I get why you kind of did that. And I don't know. It was it was over the top. Dumb in that in that sense. And so I thought, man, it could. I think I think Bill Burst, funny enough as it is, I think the dynamic between the other comedian guys could have been good just by having like a more real normal story. But I think they they like double and triple down. That's too bad. Yeah. I don't know. I'm curious for you. I mean, it's you guys will watch it. Yeah, still watch it. Like it's worth to like watch it like because there are some funny parts in it. But I was really excited about it. I thought, oh, this is going to be really funny. And I thought it was the premise is great. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought. That the premise was pretty good. And I thought, oh, we need something like this to kind of like poke at it a little bit. But then even even I thought it wasn't like a little too far. Like, OK, well, it's like too extreme. Really? Yeah. So darn it. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, we'll watch it. Yeah, I want to hear what you guys think so we can talk about it afterwards. I'll watch it. You know what? I'm really interested on watching right now just to make a little bit of a left turn. And I don't know if you're talking to your family that are all in finance and money, but this is the month when all of the the school loans are turned back on. So during the pandemic, they suspended on. Yeah, they suspended and deferred all of it. And so that's going to be like the average person. How many people do you want to bet? Took that pause and instead of saving that money, spend it. Of course. You add that to a lot of the companies that got all kinds of money on low interest rates that are all coming back around to 8%. So the prediction is that or my prediction, I'm going to say is that, you know, they've been talking about like soft landing, soft landing. But if this was the last interest rate hike, which we still might see one more in November, but let's say it's not one more. If you look back historically on all the major recessions that we had, it doesn't technically happen until 11. There's a lag. Yeah, 11 months lag after the last interest rate. And so we've been raising the interest rate, interest rate, raising. I saw that video you sent. It was interesting because the Fed, people who work for the Fed said that there's like a 10% chance there's going to be a hard recession. And then the Bank of America, 20% of them then said it was going to be a hard recession. Then they interviewed CEOs. 80-something percent said, oh no. And it was Patrick Bid David. And he goes, I wonder why 80-something. Maybe because they know what their debt is looking like with the new interest rates. And no, they can't pay it because it's going from 3% all the way to like 8% and knowing that like, well, we can't make up on that. I didn't rise to how many, did you catch the part two where a lot of these guys did, where they loaned money at 3% and then they turned around and were investing it and getting 6%? No. That's all going to get upended, right? Because it was like, hey, take all this money while the banks are giving it to you at 3%. You could turn right around, reinvest it, make 6%. So you're making 3% on not even your money. And that game is up, so you'll no longer be able to do that. And so all those people will have to give back that money. And so, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what happens this coming year right now. Well, I think another thing that's interesting is I don't know if you guys saw the legislation that European unions try to pass to regulate internet, basically. I mean, isn't Canada going through that right now? It is, but you throw Europe on top of it, huge market. And essentially what it's saying is that they're going to be able to go through your algorithm. They're going to be able to decide, essentially the language allows them to decide what is considered misinformation or not, which, you know, we know where that could lead. So we'll see what happens, dude. You decide for us all. I think the market will respond with people using, you know, VPNs and sites that are going to be skirting around it type of deal. But the big dogs, they're going to get fined. If they break these rules, they could get fined up to 6% of their annual revenue worldwide. Now, okay, because Starlink is a whole different thing, right? Like would people technically be able to kind of do workarounds where they could then use like something like that to get access to the internet and like bypass it? They said VPN. Well, to give an example, like Google, like 20-something percent, I don't know what percent, but they have a lot of employees in Europe, right? So that's where they would have the power, as they'd say, we can impose these things in your offices in Europe. Oh, I see, in the workplace. Yeah, so. Micromanaging. This is terrible. This is terrible, by the way. I get that there's some things. And the way that what they do is they, of course they package it with stuff that everybody agrees upon, right? Like we're gonna try and stop child pornography. We're gonna try and stop human trafficking. We all agree these are bad things, yes. But the language basically is like we decide what is right and wrong. And I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. They're like, oh, we don't control the narrative like we used to. We need to clamp down on these huge internet companies. And we need to. We're gonna see this for a few years until they realize that it's way too far beyond their reach. I don't know. We'll see what happens. All right, so the shout out. Jim Quick. Yeah. Jim Quick. Do we have his Instagram? Good old Jimmy. Yeah. Greg, you know, we had him on the show recently, haven't aired the episode, but I really enjoyed that last interview. Can't wait till we release it. It's really good to know him. Yeah, that was probably, I mean, this is now the third time that we've linked up. First time in and out, didn't really get to know him that much. Second time, we had a good, I think Zoom one. And then this is the third time in my favorite one. I agree. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, and I think what that, you know, people hear him talk about it in the episode is that you assume he's this big extrovert because of Ted Talks and all the stuff that he does, but he's really an introvert by nature, you know? And so it took a couple of times of hanging out with him before. I think he kind of opened up a little bit. And so I think we got to see this one. I mean, you want to learn how to learn, how to memorize, how to improve your memory, your recall, his techniques are exceptional. That's what's made him so big. But Jim Quick is quick as K, K-W-I-K. Check him out. All right, check this out. There are natural products and ingredients that have been shown in studies to improve blood flow. Now, this is good for athletic performance, but it's also good for performance in the bedroom. By the way, there's a company called Joy Mode with only clinically proven substances that will improve your performance again in the bedroom. Go check them out. Go to usejoymode.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code Mind Pump and get 20% off. All right, back to the show. Our first caller is Mikayla from Florida. Hi, Mikayla. How can we help you? Hello, how are you guys? Great, great, how are you? I'm good, thanks for having me on. Yeah, what's your question? So my question was about adding more density and width to the lateral part of my quads. To give a little bit of background, I am an upcoming wellness competitor. I'm going into essentially a redo of my rookie amateur season. I went through a full prep. There were some issues with coaching and me not being ready because of dishonesty with the coach that I was working with. And so the leaner that I got, the more that we realized I had good mass in the intermediate and medial part of my quad, but not in my lateral. And I'm in a growth phase right now. My legs are growing, but my lateral is super, super, super stubborn. And so that's the biggest issue that I'm having with growth. And so I'm kind of wondering what I can do as far as growing that part of my leg. I love bodybuilding coaches. Yeah, I know. So, okay, so. You know, with some muscles, there's more you can do in terms of shaping the actual muscle itself and with other muscles, there's not a lot, okay? It all depends on the insertion and origin and the action of the muscle. So a good example of a muscle that I can really have a lot of influence over the shape of it would be like the pecs because where it inserts at the sternum, there's a lot of insertion points there at the sternum. So I can go upper, middle, and lower. With the quads, you have very little that you can do. Now some studies will show you can activate, you know, because what you're looking for is what they would call the sweep of the quad. This is what bodybuilding referred to as a sweep, right? The teardrop being the inner part and the sweep being the outer part. And I mean, if we go based off the studies, you know, where we'll see a little more activation on one or the other, you're probably gonna go with more of a narrow stance with your squats and your leg presses. If you want more of the teardrop, you're focusing on the stretch part. More of the squeeze at the top would maybe get the more lateral part with like a leg extension. But leg extension is not a big muscle builder to begin with. So I'm always, you know, weary of some of these studies because I'm like, okay, so you see more active, like those activation studies don't mean a whole lot. To me personally, because I've seen studies that say, this activates more of this area, but then I know for a fact those other exercises that are superior, so. Let me give you what's really gonna move the needle here and what really fucking matters, that these bodybuilding coaches try and, they try and make themselves seem so much more valuable by, oh, if we do this, you know, pigeon toe your right foot in while you do this exercise, you'll get more of this part of it. It's like, here, let me ask you, I'm gonna name some exercises that I think are tremendous and have tremendous value. Walking barbell lunges, Bulgarian split squats, single leg, leg press, sumo deadlifts. Of those exercises, I just listed off, which one do you neglect the most or which one do you do the most? I do walking lunges, every single quad focus leg day. I actually, it's sumo deadlift and kind of work in like a powerlifting style into most of my leg days, especially on my hamstring focus. I think the one that I probably neglect the most is Bulgarians and single leg, leg press. Beautiful, there's those two movements. Add those into your routine, get fucking strongest shit on those two things. You know what'll make the biggest difference on stage is gonna be how you present your body because a really good competitor on stage knows how to present their body to accentuate their strengths and to hide their weaknesses. You can do this with your quads quite a bit. So what you would do is look in the mirror, watch how you position your foot, how you bend your knee, how you flex your quad and see which one seems to make a difference in terms of the appearance. That'll make a far bigger difference than trying to develop one part of the quad more than the other. I mean, if you look at the anatomy of the quad, where are the muscles attached? They're so close to each other and they really, what do they do? They extend the knee. There's some stability going on laterally too but they really just extend the knee. So all exercises that extend the knee are working all heads of the quadriceps. So that's why I'm saying like, this is like one of those splitting hairs things that it's really annoying that bodybuilders will talk about. And generally what they find is the one that develops the quads the most is the one that gives them the look that they're looking for. This is exactly why, the reason why I asked you the question I asked and the reason why I gave that quick advice on what is going to make the sweep of your quad look better is nothing is gonna make your quads look better than developing your quads. Nothing is going to build more muscle in the area that you want than exercises that put on the most muscle in the quads. This idea of let's do an exercise, let's say on a machine and position your foot inward while you do a leg extension, you are only gonna build a fraction of the muscle you will build by doing Bulgarian split squats. If you don't do Bulgarian split squats, go get fucking strong on that and you'll build way more of a sweep than you will ever doing any specific exercise that target the sweep of your quads because every quad exercises incorporates all of the quad. So this idea that some of these bodybuilding coaches have where they're like, oh, we're gonna hit this one little area and think that you're gonna develop that muscle. Like it's a big muscle and if you want it to be more pronounced, the best thing we could do are exercises that should we do it. Sounds like you're already doing a lot of good ones. I'm sure you're doing barbell back squats. I'm sure you're doing front squats. You said you're doing walking lunges with barbell. Those are all killers. I just assumed you were doing those so I didn't bring them up. But I'll tell you some other good ones is a single leg leg press because you can get really heavy at that and you'll notice that development in there and doing unilateral work because when you get really good at bilateral work like being a power lifter, it's less about sculpting the body and focusing on that muscle. It's more about moving the most weight you possibly can. So you doing some unilateral, heavy loading type stuff is gonna be great for that. That's why I said single leg press, Bulgarian split squats, watch what that does to your quads by you just focusing on those things. And slight elevation of your heel will give you more quad in all those exercises. So like if you wear squat shoes where your heels elevated a little bit, it'll give you more knee flexion and extension meaning you're gonna get more quad activation with your heels slightly lifted. So you want more quad focus when you're doing your leg exercises, your squats or leg press, whatever, wear squat shoes and that'll give you a little bit more quad activation. And the biggest difference that makes client A versus client B, there's the sweep of their quad or the width of their shoulders is genetics. Like your quads look the way they do not because you're not good at doing certain exercises because genetically that's how your quads are built up and you getting as lean as shit is going to show the best version of your quads. And if you wanna develop a part of the quads, it'd be developing any part of the quads. What can we do to build your quads in general? So for me, if I have an experienced lifter like you who's already doing a lot of good stuff, I'm looking for novel, big bang exercises that I could get you to do and get good at. And if you told me Bulgarian split squats are ones you don't do a lot, or you don't put a lot in, it's like, let's go get strong on that. And I'll show you how quickly. Now this advice is for the quads, right? So if you asked us about the shoulders, well, I can give you exercises that are gonna hit the lateral, the front, the side, or the rear. If you tell me chest, I can do more upper, middle, or lower. But with the quads, it's not really, the focus is not gonna really yield you any results. You're much better off just really developing the quads. But I would still even talking, maybe the shoulder's a little bit different because you have the rear and the front. But chest, even I would say the same thing is like, if you want the lower part of your chest to be developed, let's just say, and you never do incline chest press, I would say go do incline chest press. Even though someone who is a biomechanics nerd would be like, oh, well that's not targeting more the lower part of the chest, that's more the upper chest. I know that, but I know that if it's an exercise you never do, and it's novel, you're gonna get the most growth in your chest from that, which will also make the lower part of the chest look good. These same rules apply when we're talking about the glutes. But you get the point, right? You get the point where we're trying to make, right, Michaela? Yeah. Yeah, and now the second part of the question has to do with the hamstrings. I don't think so, did I? Yeah, it says protrusion of my hamstrings. You're looking for that too. Oh, okay. So yeah, that was about two months ago when I said that and that's when I started adding in sumo deadlifts to my hamstrings. And my growth in my posterior chain skyrocketed. Oh, excellent. Right there is an example of what we're talking about right now. Like you could get somebody who might go like, oh, you want the standing leg curl or something like that. Yeah, you want the insertion of the hamstring to that glute, that tie-in. Oh, we should do more of the donkey kickbacks or we should do more, like they'll give you some specific exercise that targets that area better. But you know what you did? You went and did a big bang for your buck exercise that you didn't do a lot of and you saw incredible results in your hamstrings. Same rule applies with what we're talking about right now. Like that's the secret. Secret sauce when you're trying to develop a muscle to look a certain way. Bodybuilder coaches and bodybuilders in general will go like this, let's look for this exercise that like targets it's more. No, what we'll do it is finding what is a good exercise for that muscle in general that you don't ever do or don't do a lot of, go get good at it. That's gonna build the most there. Okay, awesome. Thank you. Yeah, you got it. Thanks for calling in. Thank you. You got it. Yeah, they get carried away with that whole sculpting and shaping, like I said, some muscles you have some control, right? We use the deltoids, the chest. It's not arguing that. But no, but like some, like other muscles it's like they'll do this with biceps, you know? This it's the outer part, this it's the inner part. They'll do this with all kinds of other muscles. Some muscles that make sense, triceps. If you stretch the tricep you'll get more long head activation. But you know, I wouldn't even do that until you got really big ass developed muscles. Okay, here listen, let's use your, because the shoulders may has the best argument for kind of where you're going. Let me even round this out even more. You do front dumbbell raises. You do lateral raises. You do rear flies in the equal amount. And that's what you've done to shape your shoulders up. That's all you do. And you come to me and you say, Adam, I wanna build my rear delts. Go overhead press. Overhead press. Go barbell overhead press. Or row. Why? Because it's a big gross motor movement it's gonna pack on the most muscle on your shoulders and you're not even doing it. Also, you gotta, you know, you gotta keep in mind like a lot of this advice comes from very well-developed body builders. Like when you get to a point where you've got really big gym all day long. Now, now you start to play with, okay, I gotta do, I gotta start every workout with the rear flies, right? But yeah. 100% because that, because that guy isn't missing Bulgarian squats. He's not missing and he's doing all those things and he's still in the fucking gym for his second time of his 14 times he's gonna show up to the gym that week. So it makes a little bit of sense to do some of this like little movements up. But when I talk to the average person who's trying to get into bodybuilding or they've only done one or two shows, it's like this, getting this, and it's a way for bodybuilding coaches to sound smarter than what they really are. It's like, let me, let me show you what I know about anatomy and biomechanics of an exercise and oh, you feel that we're hitting the sweet spot. It's not even though. It's not even anatomy and biomechanics. It's a bro science. I mean, a lot of times it is. Bro mechanics. Sometimes there's some, I mean, there's like, you shout out to people like the hypertrophy coach. I think he's got incredible like, very, very smart guy and stuff like that. But in the points that he makes on his social, I think is very valid for his audience that he's talking to. I just, I've dealt with both high level competitors and average population, my career. And I know that most even competitors are missing out on some of the stuff that I would coach the general population on first. What is this wellness category? Is this new? It's a new category. It's between figure and bikini. So figure got really like two shredded, then bikini came in, that started getting too shredded. Then they brought in wellness. So it's a little bit more soft. Yeah, it's supposed to be more healthy. I mean, and for them, when they do this, every time they open up a new category that is more, that seems more attainable. It exaggerates the rest of them. They will know they attract more competitors. They grow every time you do that. And this is like, this is, they figured this out when they first introduced physique. They introduced physique and all of a sudden all these people want to compete again on stage. Just when you look at bodybuilder and physique. Yeah. And I have classic bodybuilder, which is in between bodybuilder and physique. Our next caller is Bobby from Virginia. Bobby, what's up? Hey, you look familiar. Hey, good morning. I get that all the time, but I've never seen you all. Oh wow, really? Oh, I totally thought maybe you called in before. No shit. No, no, no, no, I get that. But I get this everywhere I go. So join the crowd. All right, all right. Thanks for having me on today. I really appreciate your show and everything I've learned from you so far. Cool. So go ahead and jump into that. Oh yeah, yeah, what's your question, buddy? Okay, so just a little background. In 2020, I found myself at 354 pounds. Started making a body decision, mainly because of a surgery. That's how I found out how heavy I was. And got myself down to about 195. And when I wrote you this question, I was gonna join a body fit challenge to try to get myself from what I was at at the time a 9.5% body fat down to see if I could get myself to like five or below or whatever. I decided to forego that event at this time just due to listening to you all and everything. But I, so I started MAPS Anabolic and I've gone from about 195 to about 205. And that's just been in the pre-phase thing. So I'm freaking out a little bit because that's a lot of weight. You know, I mean, again, I have this kind of mental thing now after losing so much weight. But I haven't tested my body fit yet. I'm gonna do it next month just to see where I'm at, just to make sure that I'm, you know, am gaining muscle. I feel like I am because of strength and size of clothes and that sort of thing. But anyways, I'm 45, six foot five. So I know my body can probably take on a lot more muscle and pounds. But again, so I wanted your recommendation on how, what I need to do to, what would you would suggest to gain muscle but also lose body fat? Maybe I'm approaching this wrong after listening to you guys now for two months. I probably am. So I'll shut up now. If you sit around 10%, I would go gain. Yeah, can we just get, I want to get some clarity on like how amazing this is, what you've done here. You've lost well over a hundred pounds. You've gotten down to 9.5% body fat and you're actually eating 2,800 to 3,200 calories. That's about 60 pounds. Oh, is it 60? Yeah, 354. No, no, 95. No, bro. Do your math. It's 60, bro. Oh, wow. Yes, dude. He's, you've lost, is that right? Is this all right? Bro, you understand how crazy that is? That's insane. And he's at 9.5% and he's eating 2,800 to 3,200 calories. Now, granted, I know you're six foot five and so we have room to bump our calories, but bro, you're in a fucking really good play and you did a really good job. So right now you're at 2.05, you said? Yeah, right around 2.05 right now. Cause you bumped his calories. Yeah, 2.05. So yeah, so, and if you were sitting less than 10% going into that, you're doing okay. I mean, that 10 pound weight gain, some of it, you're stronger. You said you're stronger. So some of it's muscles, some of it's probably water. Mostly water. Yeah, in the muscles. Do they feel fuller? Do they feel tighter? Do you get better pumps when you're working out? That's probably. Yeah, a lot better pumps. That's probably what's going on. Now I see here that you work out between 14 to 16 hours a week. Yeah. That's a combination of lifting, even walking the dog, stuff like that, but I'm recovering from it. Prior to this summer, I was running 150 to 200 miles a month. I got this muscle injury in my shin around May and I dialed that back and I started swimming. So swimming is most of the what I do now. I will run once or twice a week. I like to do like a sprint session where I run for three minutes easy, sprint for 20 seconds for 10 minutes after I lift. Like I said, these are after I'm doing the functional days on an anabolic, because I've been on that now for the past month. So that's the only running I do. Now I'm actually in Miami this week and I've run a mile a morning just on the beach because it's nice, right? And I do enjoy running, but it was hurting my body. I was always stiff or whatever. But now I feel great. I just feel bloated and full and I don't know. It may just be I need to do this for a few months because I never really lifted. I only did push ups and then like some light dumbbells. This is in your head. Bro, yeah, this is in your head. It's getting used to it. I would go with a slow reverse diet. So kind of slowly bump your calories over time and focus on getting stronger through MAPS anabolic. And you're gonna build muscle. You might get leaner. You'll probably stay the same, but you might get leaner not because you lost body fat, but because you gained lean body mass. So your current fat mass will be measured as a lower percentage of your overall body weight. But I would do like a nice clean bulk, meaning, you know, if you're eating between 28, it says here between 2,800 to 32 calories a day, you know, I would keep it around 3,000 to 3,500, something like that, just so it's a little higher than normal. And then just get stronger. That's the direction I would go. I wouldn't go, you know, I wouldn't try and get leaner than the nine and a half, unless you really want to, but when you get down below 9%, especially coming from where you came from, you start to get to the... It's not sustained. Yeah, it's the unhealthy range and it starts to affect hormones negatively and all that stuff for most people. Well, let me tell you too what, if you're my client or say my friend, the goal I would want you to have, it's your body, it's your choice, you could do whatever you want. But what I would want you to do is I'd want you to get to a place where all the swimming and running and all the stuff that you're doing, that you don't need to to maintain your calorie intake and your physique where you're at. Like I want it truly to be, and I don't know where your headspace is when you do those things, but a lot of times when I have a client that is that heavy, lost a lot of weight and they did a lot of it through that much activity, their relationship to that exercise, they've told themselves they love doing it, but a lot of it is like, I love doing it because it keeps my weight down, not because I really enjoy to swim or run per se. And so I would want you to be in that headspace. I want you to be in a place where it's like we've built enough muscle on your body, Bobby, where you could eat 3,200 calories a day and not gain weight and not do any running or any swimming. And so therefore you can go and do that as like a true leisurely thing and you could cut it out of your life and it's still be okay and you still maintain and all the weight doesn't come flying back on. So I would want us to be there. And the one way to make sure we get there is to keep reverse dieting, building a lot of muscle, slowly pulling back on the amount of swimming, running and all things we're doing, not because I'm going to get rid of it forever, but because I want to show you, you can do that. I want to show you that you're going to have a time in your life, Bobby, when you're not going to be able to do all that running, all that swimming, stuff like that. And I want you to be feel like you're in control of your weight, not that it's going to like come piling back on because all of a sudden you stopped doing all that activity. And I can prove that to you by building your metabolism up through building muscle through strength training. That's where I would want you to be. And then if you look back at me and say, oh my God, Adam, this is crazy. I'm eating 3,800 or 4,000 calories a day and I'm loving this. And I'm like, hey, you know, if you want to run and swim, go for it, dude. But do it because you love it, not because you're trying to keep your weight with it. I think it's very realistic, based off of what we know now. It's very realistic for you to get to a 37 to 4,000 calorie maintenance with good lean body mass and good lean body fat percentage. And not even really running. Here's six foot five. It's very, very realistic. If you're already there now, after losing that much weight, because typically what happens with that much weight loss is there's a, you see a much slower metabolism. So if you're already at 28 to 32 maintaining, it's very realistic over the next six months, I'd say, of just focusing on strength, slow reverse diet, building muscle, hitting protein to get up to 37,000, maybe to 4,000 calories and stay pretty damn lean. And that's a really cool place to be, because then if you want to get down to 5%, you go through your runs and swims, or you just go back down to 3,200, now you get shredded. Yeah, or that, yeah. But you have all that flexibility. I mean, man, you're in a great place, Bobby. I mean, you really are. You've done a good job thus far getting here and not a lot of people could get away. Yeah, strong. If you really focus on getting strong, you're going to be blown away by how your body looks. I want to, you have MAPS anabolic. I'd like to put you in our forum. I'd like to hear your journey as you're going through and I'd like to be that support for you when you get in your own way, because that's going to happen. I already know that. This is the hardest part you're going to have. Well, you're already saying you feel funny because you gained 10 pounds, which is probably water, muscle fullness, but to somebody who has lost a lot of weight, who was heavy, it's like scary. No, yeah, yeah. It's a mental thing and even my license, if you heard people in the background, she's been telling me the same things now that I hear from you all. I never enjoyed the weightlifting. I never really liked it. I mean, I was in the army when I was younger and that sort of thing and I did it, but now I'm finding I really like and I like the time it gives me back because I run my own company. I'm sure I'm in a doctoral program. So I really like that now I don't have to say, oh, I've got to go run for an hour and then run again. So I've been able to separate the running, but I do enjoy, like I really do enjoy cardio. That's fine. But scale it way back, because I mean, these lifts and then the trigger sessions, my thing is bringing the trigger sessions lower, right? I wanna do like 200 push-ups on the days of the lift and even 20 or 30 is like, oh, but I'm getting there. Think of the trigger sessions as facilitating recovery and adaptation, not as sending the muscle building signal itself. It's funny, you know, honestly, you're actually somebody who I might even let skip those. I don't normally tell people that but because it sounds like to me you have a tendency to wanna do more. Mobility to be a better person. And you don't need to be doing more activity. And by the way, when I say scale back on that, I wouldn't rip the bandaid off and go like, no more swimming, no more none of that stuff. You know, I'd say, hey, you know, every week you're doing about this much, let's just pull back a little bit on that and let's put more emphasis on the strength training. Bobby, what happens, what would happen if you went for, like you're already doing this with running. You said you're in Miami, you're running about a mile on the beach, you're probably not even thinking about it like a workout. You're probably like, oh, this is gorgeous. I'm gonna go enjoy this. What would your cardio look like if that's how you did it? If it had nothing to do with working out, had nothing to do with trying to sweat and burn calories. If you're just like, I'm gonna go enjoy this. Like, would it look different than it is now? Probably not. I mean, I think three months ago, yeah, I would have said it. If I would go out and I'd wanna do an hour, you know, run an ultra marathon, that sort of thing. But now, no, I mean, a nice long walk with the dog, the life, an easy swim. And it's all zone too. Like I said, I only am doing this for you because I really got into the longevity piece, right? And I realized that running was probably building up more visceral fat, that sort of thing. I just wanna be healthy when I'm 80 years old, I wanna be able to do whatever I wanna do. Oh, you're on the right track. You're doing good, bro. Walks are perfect. You're fine then. You're doing good, bro. Yeah, do the reverse diet, build some muscle. Mainly because from a longevity standpoint, because you might think, what does it have to do with longevity? It gives you more flexibility because if you plan on living in a modern society, you're gonna have access to a lot of food, events, vacations. And if your body is maintaining at 4,000 calories, you go on vacation with your wife for a couple of weeks. I mean, you got a lot, you know, if you look at the studies on the negative effects of food, you know, 95% of those negative effects are negated when the calories are lower than what the person burns. You can look at studies on high sugar diets, terrible diets, but if the person's body is burning it off, it's like almost all of the negative effects are negated. So really what it does is just gives you the flexibility to enjoy your life into not always have to worry about, you know, what you're eating and putting in your mouth. So that's why we tend to recommend that to most people, because again, we live in so much plenty, so much variety that I would rather have someone have a faster metabolism than one that's a little slower. You're on the right track though, bro. You're doing really good. I want Doug to put you in the forum and just keep us posted, dude. Just tag us every month or two and let us know how things are going. If you have any challenges or what's up and we'll give you little bits of tips and stuff like that along your way. But I think you're in a really good place, a good mindset and I think you're on the right path. And I think you're gonna be really impressed with what you're gonna be able to do because I think you're primed to build some muscle. What are you studying right now by the way, Bobby? Strategic leadership. Okay. Business school, yeah, yeah, so. All right, good for you, man. I just wanted to do something hard and I figured like running, I got to the point where it's, I don't know, it's a whole mental, it's the wrong mental mindset, but again, now I'm in school and I'm enjoying it, so hey, that's why it's fun. But I love the way you guys have really helped transform, because I was going down a bad place, just beating my body, thinking more is more. And I like it when you say, find the least you can do. I got to get to that place. And I listen to everything you guys put out, read everything you put out, so thank you so much for what you do. Appreciate it. You're on the right track, dude. You're good, man. Awesome. You're gonna do good, bro. Thanks, Bobby. Stop listening to David Goggins. You'll be fine. So we'll be fine. How did you know? How did you know? That was my spirit. Bro, trust me. I know what would I see. I am one. So I know what would I see one, bro. All right. Thank you guys so much. Have a great day. All right, Bobby. We'll keep you posted. All right, sounds good, man. Boy, that message is so annoying. Oh. That Goggins. Yeah. I appreciate it. I respect him. I get it. But that message causes way more damage than it does good. There's some people that benefit from it. They can get off their ass and do something. Yeah. For sure. I'm partial to it. I like him, right? So I bet if we met, we'd be friends. I really like him. And I definitely think there's a big horde of people that are fucking lazy. They need to hear that shit. And they need to do some hard shit in their life because they're a bunch of pussies. And so we need people like that out there to show the potential, but like applying what he's doing is completely legal. Well, so here's the irony. The irony of it is that the people who actually take it and do it are the ones that don't need it. I know. Are the guys like him. That's the problem. The guy like him, like Bobby, who was very disciplined as you can see and very consistent and is a hard motherfucker. And he takes it to that level. And it's like, that's the guy who doesn't need that. That's the guy who needs, hey, your goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. That's right. That's right. Like that is what that guy needs to hear. If we started a class here that was like a boot camp, kick the crap out of yourself, for sure it would attract people who will enjoy beating the shit out of themselves. It would not attract a person who's like, oh, you know what? I do need to get off the couch. They'd be like, I don't want to do that. I want to do something awesome. If you're getting me ready for war, you know, I'm gogging today. Very different. Very different. Our next caller is Kate from Australia. Hi, Kate. How can we help you? Hi. Hi. Thanks for having me on today. I just have a question. I'm guessing you've gotten very redder, but pull ups, I thought actually you should say chin ups. Chin ups I've been struggling with since I started resistance training. I can only get like a max rep of four and we've been at four pretty much this whole year and it's just starting to piss me off but I can't do it anymore and it's not going anywhere. And chin ups. Yeah. I've got a couple. One, the fact that you're up to three to four reps is actually really good and it also opens the opportunity to do heavy singles, meaning that you strap a 20 pound or 25 pound weight to your waist and do one and then rest and then do one again. Also, the opportunity to do where you get a bench, put 30 to 40 pounds on your waist, start in the pull up position and resist the way down with a lot of weight. So a weight that you can't even do one with, you put on your waist, you get on a bench to where you're already in the chin up position and then you then step off the bench and then resist the weight down. Or even an isometric. You know, the tips that Adam has given you are very valuable, but they do need to be programmed properly because what a lot of people mess up with when they're trying to get better, especially with pull ups for some reason or chin ups is they just go hard every time they work out. And that's gonna make it very difficult for you to progress. So here's, listen, what I'm gonna tell you, for me was eight out of 10 times would successfully get someone to double the reps of their chin up. Literally 80% of the time this would work. And what I would tell my clients was, get a chin up bar, put it in your house and throughout the day, you can do three to four, right? Three to four reps, you said? Yeah. Are you gonna tell me to do it one at a walk fast? I've been doing that. Just, no, no, no. Just do one. You won, yeah. Just do one, yeah. No, no, no. Every time you walk back. You walk by it, do one. Come back down, whatever. You know she put in her note, she's doing that, right? Yeah, so now are you doing that plus a back workout or are you doing that and not doing a back workout? So I'm doing that and then I'm doing, so I've just finished the aesthetic, but I've just been adding in chin ups and dropping something else out of one of the aesthetic days, a couple of the aesthetic days. So I'm making sure that I'm doing it at least twice a week and then doing four stitches. Yeah, so now that's a little too much, right? So do this over a four-week period. Take all the back workout out of your workout, maybe one exercise or none and just practice your pull-ups throughout the day. That's it. And then you should see a strength improvement. I don't think more intensity is, especially now that I know you did maps aesthetic, which is really high volume. Oh yeah. I don't think more intensity is the key. Like literally, I wouldn't do any back workout in your training and just throughout the day, maybe five or six times throughout the day, you just do one, you just do one pull-up and then you walk around, do whatever and a couple hours later do another pull-up and just do that maybe five times, maybe five out of the seven days. And you'll probably, even if you feel like, by the way, even if you feel like that one pull-up gets way easier, which is what you're gonna start to feel like, even within the same day, what you may find is you're doing the morning, doing the afternoon, oh, I feel like I can do two. Just do one by the end of the four weeks, give yourself a week of rest, go back to your pull-ups and then see what your max is and you'll probably be able to get close to seven, probably close to seven reps. Go. Yeah. Now, I want you to follow up with us because I wanna hear about how this works for you. Do you think maybe we should have her on a different program than Maps Aesthetic? Aesthetic has a lot of volume. I know that's why I said she should put her on a different program. Are you finishing Aesthetic? Yes, I just finished it. I'm just doing a daily week now and then I was gonna go back to anabolic. Oh, perfect. There you go. You're good. You're good. You can still deadlift in anabolic, but don't do any of the other back exercises while you're doing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, look at that, thank you. Yeah, you got it. By the way, Doug, can you put her in the forum if she's not in there? Yeah. Because I want you to follow up with us. I wanna hear what happens in four weeks. Yeah, I will, thank you very much. You got it, thank you. I'm glad you said the fur to do that because I don't agree with you on this one. What do you think? I think my advice is better. With the current volume she's doing? It doesn't even matter. I think she got to her three to four reps by just through her frequency of doing, she's wrote in her notes that she's doing what we already suggested. Yeah, but she's also, what is Aesthetic? How many sets are you doing for back Monday, Wednesday, or Friday? I still think that she's gonna get more benefit from heavy loading singles and resisting negatives even heavier. Well, I think they both work, but because of the amount of volume that she's doing, adding a negative, a heavy negative, that might be an issue. I mean, maybe. I didn't get any signs from her response that she's like hurting or overtraining or anything like that though. So, I mean, we'll see, we'll see what she does. I would have stuck with what I said and I think she'd notice a difference right away just from that. Well, we'll see. I don't think it's wrong. I don't think either one would have been necessarily wrong, but with that much volume plus practicing pull-ups. I mean, I would always go the direction you went first but because she put in her, that she's listened to our advice about doing chin-ups frequently throughout the day. You know what I need to say when I tell people to do this is to cut back on their volume and intensity of the workouts. If you're already pushing the volume and intensity and then you decide you're gonna practice a bunch of pull-ups throughout the week, it could be enough to put you over. Yeah, yeah. There's a good chance that's happening. Our next caller is Sam from Virginia. What's up, Sam? How can we help you? Hey guys, how you doing? Good, good. Thanks so much for taking time out of your day to speak to me. I hope you and your families are doing good. I've been a listener for many years so bear with me, it's a little surreal. Maybe let me just jump into my question, give a little structure and then I can give a little backstory as to why I'm asking this particular question because it might be a little bit of an odd question or not your everyday question. So what I wanted to ask you guys is what you thought about whether there was a vocational space in the fitness and gym industry right now for a mental health professional like myself, even if I had to go get certified as a personal trainer. The reason I'm asking this question just to give a little understanding and backstory and why it chose this question, like I said in my email, from a pretty young age, I've battled with my mental health and particular post-traumatic stress disorder and all that comes with that. It's something I live with, something I deal with. And at 28 years old today, by the grace of God, I can say I'm doing well and I'm in active recovery from it. But the point is that I've done therapy and it's benefited me, I've tried medications and they've benefited me and I've even studied psychology and counseling myself in college and yet all with all that to say there's nothing that has consistently helped me on a day-to-day basis to improve my mental health like exercise and working out. In particular, weightlifting, strength training, hiking and a little bit of jiu-jitsu and boxing but primarily since I was 15, I've lifted weights and that's not to minimize the power of medications and therapy. In psychotherapy, I believe in it so much I'm a counseling intern right now with my own clients but the gym and lifting weights and exercise as a whole it might sound dramatic to some people but I truly believe God brought that to me to save my life and to wrap up and I'll let you guys answer but I just wanna express my gratitude to you guys I know you hear it a lot but as funny as it might sound your podcast has been a companion to me on some pretty dark days but especially the way you guys have talked especially well maybe not recently but maybe you've done it for a while now but just the way you talk about building a healthy relationship with exercise and not over-correcting from to where you're overworking yourself and you're just exercising to just not feel anything and I think that was a blessing for me to hear that from you guys because it was at a time when I was dangerous getting close to doing that so I mean from the bottom of my heart really thank you guys for speaking about mental health because Lord knows I'm not alone but anyway I know that was a lot but that's really the context why that question is so important to me as funny as a question as it might be because I really wanna use both to help people I don't think you can do I think they should be combined honestly so just wonder what you guys thought about that huge need for that huge need for that I think the future of the fitness and health industry is either partnerships I used to, so towards the end of my career I partnered with therapists and counselors to work with clients and I had tremendous success as a trainer so I think the future is combining you mentioned three modalities right therapy, medication and then physical activity all three of them have value nothing compares to combining all three especially when you're dealing with really tough situations exercise is such a powerful vehicle for personal growth physiologically it improves your health so it improves your brain health and your physical health which contributes to things like anxiety and depression and your resilience but it's also just a growth journey I mean you gotta struggle at exercises you gotta learn things about yourself there's a lot of self acceptance there's purpose and meaning behind the discipline that it requires to get up and do something and then there's things that are unexplainable about why it's so powerful but the data now shows it is incredibly effective for especially the common forms of depression, anxiety that people tend to suffer from if you work with people who are trying to improve their fitness and health or lose weight and so you have a background in therapy and then you also have a background in exercise knowledge workout programming, nutritional guidance I mean you're gonna be amazing you'll be so effective with people it's not even funny the thing that I used to teach my trainers the most to help them become successful just in terms of getting results for the clients was the part that you've already learned because they knew the exercise part they knew the diet part but the behavioral aspect of what it takes and what helps is where they needed to learn and when they did it was like magic so massive need in the space for someone like yourself it's so much so Sam most of my career I hired trained and developed trainers that's what I did for most of my career I would rather hire you to work with me with maybe no training other people background or any national certifications than the guy who has a four year degree in three national certifications that's how powerful where you're coming from is for the space one you're incredibly passionate about it because of what it's done to you and in your life I think that most of personal training is mindset and there's the psychology, behavioral science and so if you already have a passion and interest there you're going to help more people out through that vehicle of communication than you ever will by understanding macros to the deepest level or biomechanics and program design those things are nice and helpful I can teach you that as a boss I can teach you how to put exercise selection together and how to balance out someone's macros but the schooling and experience that you have with what you've gone through and what you were going through oh my God that makes it an even better trainer so yeah man I think that there's a massive need for it and I think there's huge opportunity for someone who is passionate about weight training and helping people out and has your background yeah it's interesting because you see how they're already realizing the importance for movement with therapy in combination and you're seeing some little bits of I mean this is a big ship to steer and I think that people like you coming into the fitness base and actually applying that would probably take off and establish that even I would say earlier than the other approach so I think that this could be the spark in terms of a different segment of how we sort of take this on and bring it in through the fitness industry as opposed to the therapy industry maybe but both are going to be affected by this that's a given yeah the two the two directions I could see would be continuing doing what you're doing get some certifications and training in exercise, technique, form you know work with some good coaches work with diet so you can kind of do it all that takes a little while or just continue to dive deep on the therapy side and then when you want to start a business I would partner with some really good trainers and then you would do the counseling side and you would work hand in hand with the trainers who would do the exercise and nutrition side so those are the two avenues that I could see that I would say I partnered because I just didn't have the background or the education and I'm telling you it was so effective it was insane like I knew when people worked with me and they worked with a therapist and then I would throw in body work in that if I could because there's also some profound benefits to having someone who really understands body work it takes years off people that don't see results oh my god it was like it was like I knew it was like 90% of them would have a tremendous success in all aspects it was incredible weight loss and mindset and all that stuff stay close to us Sam we got something to come down the pipe in the next quarter or so so something that will be perfect for you yeah for sure awesome thank you guys so much I really appreciate it and like I said I'm sure you guys are aware but I just wanted to reinforce how powerful it is for you guys and your unique space to speak about mental health because I know growing up I kind of saw working out and going to the gym and lifting weights and you know all that as one world and I saw dealing with my mental health as a totally separate world and as I've gotten old you know and just the last thing I'll say on here a real world example of what you guys talk about all the time is you know I got the privilege of working as a associate counselor at a drug rehab center for like four years so I worked with people in addiction and we had this little gym like in the basement with like cobwebs on it and stuff but it had some good stuff and like as a young counselor I'm still a young counselor but even back then I felt like I didn't know a whole lot of psychotherapy and stuff and so what I would just do people were having a bad day I'd say hey like I'll go open the gym for you like let's go work out and so we would get down there and I would see man like I know this sounds crazy but people I even had like one young guy who was dealing with math you know he was withdrawing from math he was craving math and just getting him to go to the gym and obviously I didn't push him hard it was like don't do too much your body's very compromised right now but just doing just a little bit of light exercise just to see the difference and that's kind of when it started to click because it was already working for me and then it was like oh my word like just the difference that those folks did who were in the 30 day inpatient treatment center when they were consistently going down even if it's just walking on the treadmill every day versus the people that didn't and instead we're just doing the the medications and the therapy it was amazing the difference and so that's another thing I know this is I know this there's a you know hopefully a good amount of people will hear this and so if I just want people to know if you're out there you're struggling and you feel like you need to ditch the fitness journey to like go figure out your mental health obviously like don't please don't you know just maybe adjust it like you guys always talk about the proper amount don't overwork yourself don't use it as a form of to just beat yourself into not being able to feel anything but please don't cause it I've personally seen it save lives so again thank you guys so much for what you do. You got it Sam nothing you said sounds crazy to us we've been doing this for a long time so it's like we know you're on the right track perfect sense keep it up can't wait to hear your journey thanks for calling in man. All right guys take care. You got it. You know I have to comment on this because the strength of the system that we have here in the Western in Western societies is also its weakness right? So we do a really good job of segmenting things and going deep. The problem with that and that's good because you really understand one system very well when you do that. The problem with that is we've created this illusion that health is segmented that there's mental health there's physical health there's spiritual health there's it's health right? It's all health improve your health and your health improves. It is not separate it's it's such a one organism it's a terrible illusion and exactly what he says like somebody who wants to improve their mental health like they don't you know what's the most that they understand about exercise? Oh it releases endorphins good feel good chemicals. No it's so much more than that. It's so much more than that. And then on the flip side somebody wants to lose weight. Oh I just got to follow this plan that not thinking like I had to deal with like some some trauma or some other issues with my relationship with food and my body like it's all one and people need to understand that and if you understand that you your chance to success are so much higher. Man I would love to see a study done off of what you know what he just said that would be really cool to see is take a rehab center like that where they're in for 30 days and take half the group and they have some weight training and yeah one half a group stays on a daily weight training regimen every for 30 days and then take the other group that doesn't at all and compare the two. You want to know. I mean I have a pretty good idea what would happen but why have we not had a good. Dude I'm gonna tell you know why because there's more money in them coming back. Come on what are you gonna sell with that. Yeah exactly what you're selling. You know what makes me sad when this first happened I remember I was so devastated. I thought what a stupid thing that they've done. They took gyms out of prisons here in California. Do you know how terrible that is. The one outlet. Do you know that how beneficial that was to so many inmates and their mental health and it gave them some purpose and they could go better themselves. Purpose like yeah they're improving themselves. They're growing in terms of like being a better human being. Like all of that is there once you start like actively working on yourself and in fitness is a huge part of that. It's crazy. They're oh we don't want inmates to get too big and strong. Well I guess we don't want them to get smart too. Take out the libraries while you're at it. Let's just keep them. The dumbest possible thing and it has. Doesn't make any sense. And I know there's data to show this. It's had profoundly negative effects. I remember an Arnold and bodybuilders in the 70s used to visit prisons to teach them how to strength train and exercise. Put the gyms back in the prisons and go ahead and use it as a way to keep them. Do you really want reform? Yeah. That's what you're gonna do. 100%. Well that's the thing. Do you really want to reform? Is that what we're, is that the true desire? When they make money the longer they stay. That's right. And the same thing goes with these rehab centers. Exactly. It's like I wish I remember that. What was that documentary? Remember that documentary Doug? I can't remember the name of it but that was such an enlightening documentary. The rehab centers and the insurance works for those and like what a hustle it is to just keep them signing up for those. Like the success rate is like it's under 15%. What is it? Body brokers. Watch that documentary. That's worth a watch. The business of keeping sick. It's crazy. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our free fitness, muscle building and fat loss guides. They're free. You can also find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump, Justin. I'm at Mind Pump to Stefano and Adam is at Mind Pump, Adam.